It took me some time to get round to Supernatural, put off by the ridiculous ITV trailer, with that idiotic tagline. Did it really? How did I miss that? Oh, wait. It’s for people who’ve never read Dracula. Or even Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, Northanger Abbey. Or, for something more up-to-date, see Ginger Snaps, The Witches of Eastwick, or even Twilight. Simmering subtext is the name of the game, folks.
Supernatural concerns brothers Sam and Dean Winchester, as they travel the States on a quest-cum-road trip to find their missing father (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Grey’s Anatomy, PS, I Love You, Watchmen) and tackle the demon which left the brothers motherless. En route, they take up the family trade, ridding the world of evil one restless spirit at a time. Played by photogenic alumni of various grades of teen gloss, a quick primer in case you have difficulty telling the brothers apart:
Dean (Jensen Ackles), the stoic, growling elder brother. Distinguishable by his fondness for cock rock, his equally growly muscle car, and by the suspiciously perfect cupid’s bow.
Sam (Jared Padalecki), the introspective, intellectual floppy haired one, afflicted by loss, premonitions of doom, a dark birthright and an inferior pout.
As well as demons and vampires, the boys endure endless artfully grubby motel rooms, and a fractious relationship, which provides most of the humour. The leads founder when the whip-crack brisk plots require more emotional depth than carefully choreographed action, barefaced cheek, or po-faced heroics, but Supernatural is unafraid to tinker with the Monster-of-the-Week formula, or poke fun at itself.
By the second season, the writers experiment with non-linear storylines, and picking apart the absurdities of the show’s mythology, like when someone finally thinks to ask where vanquished spirits end up. There’s the spry, if glaringly obvious running gag that Winchesters are frequently mistaken for lovers thanks to their intimate living arrangements, bickering and over-compensating machismo. Even my creaky and sadly unreliable gaydar pinged a little when watching the show: is it Supernatural’s manly panic about pansy stuff like, uh, feelin’s? Because we all know that real badass, hard drinkin’, skirt chasin’ ghost huntin’, demon wastin’ manly men only use consonants at the end of verbs when absolutely necessary.
Or is it a nod to the huge, weird and occasionally wonderful fan community that propels this show’s success? Nah, it’s just odd-couple laughs and copper-bottomed entertainment, as in Mid Season Two episodes Tall Tales and Roadkill.
Supernatural takes sexuality off the back burner, and makes it the text, what with all the nubile young bodies cluttering almost every frame. I could work myself up into a proto-feminist lather about the constant drooling camerawork slithering over cleavages and thighs, the helpless screaming damsels, or lip glossed satanic hellcats who snare hapless men by moonlight to their deaths while chanting pig-Latin in parked cars, or girls without the sense not to do silly, slasher-flick things like head out alone into the woods on a misty night.
But that would be too much like hard work for Supernatural, and much less amusing than giggling over the occasional tumble; memorably, the tortured sex scene that takes place post-peril, in Heart, by a symbolically blazing fireplace. Watch out for lots of gratuitous, waxed male chest, as well as back scratching and coy biting. Y’know, ‘cos the girl’s an animal in the sack, with great nails, one who might tear your lungs out, Jim. No fraidy-cat subtext about the perils of female sexuality there at all. None.
Still, I got a kick out of the movie-nerd in-jokes – using aliases Dante and Landis during a werewolf episode, after the respective directors of An American Werewolf in London and The Howling, or guest turns to tickle horror fans, like The Exorcist’s Linda Blair as a sceptical small-town cop.
Scary most definitely is sexy, even if this doesn’t quite hit the spot. Just watch anything with Kevin Spacey being slippery, or John Malkovitch in Dangerous Liaisons. Or, um, Alan Rickman. But when taken with a pinch of salt tossed over one shoulder, and your brain in neutral, Supernatural serves up big, brash, dumb fun.
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